Williams pair target double score

20 August 2013

Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas say they are both chasing a points finish for Williams when the F1 season resumes this weekend at Spa.

Maldonado opened his account with tenth place in Hungary prior to the summer break, while Bottas heads to Belgium seeking to score for the first time after a challenging start to the season for the former championship winning outfit.

Bottas in particular will eager to break his duck, with the young Finn saying he felt recent races had shown the Grove-based team was heading in the right direction.

“I've had a good break during the shutdown period but I'm now itching to get back in the car,” he said. “We have shown some improvements in race pace over the past few races and we know we are heading in the right direction. We will therefore be looking to have another points scoring result this weekend that will give us good momentum for the second half of the season.”

Maldonado said he too was keen to score but was aware of the strategy challenges that Spa could provide if the weather proves to be questionable.

“Spa is one of my favourite circuits because it has so much history and is so fun to drive,” he said. “It's a very technical and fast circuit and you find a very wide range of corners there: uphill, downhill, very slow, medium, fast, short and long corners. It's the most complete track of the season and this tests you as a driver and also tests the car's setup.

“The weather can be changeable and because it is such a long track, there are times where the track can be wet in one sector but dry in another which requires the teams to make some difficult strategy decisions. Two years ago I picked up my first point in Formula One here and hopefully I will be in the points again this weekend.”